EX-COVEIROA: A EXUMAÇÃO DE FLÁVIO AUGUSTO…5 ANOS DEPOIS, ABRI O CAIXÃO E O QUE VI NUNCA VOU ESQUECER 

EX-COVEIROA: A EXUMAÇÃO DE FLÁVIO AUGUSTO…5 ANOS DEPOIS, ABRI O CAIXÃO E O QUE VI NUNCA VOU ESQUECER

I’ve buried a lot of bad people in this cemetery and never had any problems with hauntings.  But the day Flávio Augusto went down into the grave, the weather turned in a way I’d never seen before.  The sky turned black in the middle of the afternoon, and not a drop of rain fell, nor was there any wind.

  It was a heavy silence that hurt our ears and made the air feel thick.  The widow was n’t crying from longing, but screaming as if she were seeing the devil in front of her. My assistant and I looked at each other and knew that the land didn’t want to accept the coffin.  It was his aunt who made things worse when she spat in the hole and uttered that cursed curse.

  She said that darkness would devour his eyes because of everything he had done in life.  I finished the job in a hurry, smelling a sulfur odor that clung to my clothes.  I thought the deceased would stay quiet down there, but I was very wrong.  Before I tell you about the horror we found when we opened that coffin 5 years later, subscribe to the channel and leave your like to guarantee your protection against what roams in the dark, because what Earth returned wasn’t a skeleton, but a warning that will keep you awake tonight

.  My name is Ramiro, and I’ve been working with death longer than most of you have been alive.  Today I am 65 years old and my back aches when the weather turns to rain.  I’m close to retiring and putting aside this shovel and this gray uniform that I’ve worn for four decades.  But the story I’m going to tell today happened when I was younger, around 35 years old.

  Back then I had the strength to dig three graves in a single day and still have enough energy left for the night shift.  I thought I’d seen it all in that cemetery, from macumba rituals to people buried with jewelry.  But nothing prepared me for what happened to the body of the man the city called the Baron.

  His name on the death certificate was Flávio Augusto, but nobody dared to call him by his name.  The whole city knew of his reputation and the fear he inspired with just a look. He was a powerful man who owned half of the productive land in the region, and many souls as well. His money bought judges and police chiefs and silenced anyone who tried to complain about the abuses.

  But what made the people tremble was not his wealth, but the pure wickedness he carried in his heart.  They said he treated his farmhands worse than he treated the thoroughbred horses he raised.  I remember hearing stories at Zed’s shop that he would use a whip on the [music] employees for any silly mistake.  If the food wasn’t hot enough, or if the clothes weren’t ironed, he would lose his temper.

  People whispered that the screams coming from the basement of the Casagrande de Madrugada were terrible.  Those weren’t the screams of animals being slaughtered, but rather of people suffering at the hands of a sadist.  He humiliated a family man in front of his young children and laughed while the man cried with shame.

  He fired sick people, evicted families from their homes in the colony without giving them any rights or warning. He was a man who exuded malice and arrogance wherever he went and believed he was immortal.  I got to see him once in his lifetime when he came to choose the location for the family tomb.  He looked at me as if I were an insect and complained that the cemetery soil smelled awful.

  Little did he know that the earth treats everyone equally and that money is worthless.  Seven palms down. But divine justice may be slow, but it never fails.  And one day his heart [music] of stone stopped beating.  When the news spread that he had died of a sudden heart attack, many people breathed a sigh of relief.  There were no tears of sadness in the city, only the silence of those waiting to see if it’s really true .

  Those of us who work the land know that bad people weigh more in the grave than good people.  Preparing for his funeral was difficult because no one on the team wanted to get near the body at the wake. The funeral home brought the coffin sealed and said the order was not to open it so that no one could see the face.  The atmosphere in the cemetery changed as soon as his funeral procession passed through the main iron gate.

  It was a hot summer afternoon, typical of January, with the sun beating down on our heads.  But inside the cemetery walls, the temperature suddenly dropped, and our teeth chattered from the cold.  There was no wind rustling the treetops, but it felt like a storm was coming.  The oldest trees began to put down their branches as if they were protesting his presence.

  I was positioned beside the open grave with the ropes in my hand, waiting for the funeral procession to arrive. His widow was walking ahead, holding a black handkerchief and walking with difficulty.  She was a thin, pale woman who seemed to live in fear of her husband even after he was dead.

  I noticed that she didn’t shed a single tear of sadness the entire time she was there.  Her gaze was filled with terror, and she kept looking around as if expecting him to get up.  His children were there too, but they seemed more concerned with the inheritance than with their father.  Nobody prayed and nobody said anything good about the man who was inside that box.

  Man, the priest said a quick prayer and stammered several times, as if the sacred words didn’t want to come out.  When the time came to lower the coffin to the bottom of the hole, the weather turned completely bad.  The sky turned as black as ink, and the clouds covered the sun, transforming afternoon into night.  But the most terrifying sign of that day was yet to come, and it would come from the person we least expected.

The coffin hit the bottom of the grave and the widow screamed in a way I will never forget in my life.  It wasn’t the weeping of a widow who had lost the love of her life, but rather a hysterical cry of liberation and fear. It looked like she was vomiting up years of pent-up fear, and that made the other relatives back away.

  His very old and hunched-over great-aunt emerged from the crowd, leaning on a cane.  She was known in the city for being a prayer leader and for understanding those ancient things that the church doesn’t explain.  Her face was full of deep wrinkles, and her eyes were white with cataracts and blindness. She reached the edge of the hole and asked permission in a hoarse voice that [music] made the silence grow louder.

  Everyone thought she was going to say one last prayer for her nephew’s soul to rest in the light, but she got right up to the edge and spat thick, dark saliva onto the wood of the coffin.  The sound of spit hitting varnished wood echoed like a gunshot in that sepulchral silence.  She raised her cane to the dark sky and began to speak in a thunderous voice that didn’t match her age.

  She said that his eyes had only served for greed and cruelty as long as he breathed.  She said that he never had pity on anyone and that, therefore, the earth would not have pity on him.  The phrase she said still gives me chills to this day when I remember the absolute certainty in her voice. She screamed for anyone who would listen that darkness would devour his eyes forever.

  She said that he would never see the light of rest and that he would wander blind for eternity, paying for his sins.  After uttering that curse, she turned her back and walked away, tapping her cane against the stones without looking back. The widow fainted in her son’s arms, and the priest ended the ceremony running off, frightened by what he had heard.

  My assistant and I covered the grave as quickly as possible because the feeling was awful.  It seemed like someone was watching us from inside the hole while we were throwing dirt on top.  The earth seemed too heavy, and each shovelful made a hollow, strange sound.  The smell of sulfur rose from the grave even before we finished laying the cement slab.

  We finished the job sweating profusely and with the feeling that we had just locked something dangerous in there.  I had no idea that that funeral was just the beginning of a nightmare that would last 5 years.  I returned home that day feeling heavy and with a headache that wouldn’t go away with medicine. I took a hot shower to try and get rid of that rotten earth smell that seemed to have stuck to my skin.

  I tried to sleep, but the widow’s screams and the old woman’s curse kept echoing in my head.  The next day, I went back to work, trying to convince myself that it was all nonsense and just tiredness.  I was 35 years old and considered myself a skeptical man who didn’t believe in ghost stories.

  To me, dead was dead, and a grave was just a hole in the ground to store what was left.  But the things that started happening in that section of the cemetery defied my logic.  The first sign was that the animals began to reject that piece of land [music] where he was.  The cemetery was always full of stray dogs that would come in to sleep near the warm graves.

  But after the baron’s funeral, they stopped passing near that particular square.  They would come within about 10 meters of Flávio’s grave [music] and slam their paws on the ground, growling.  The fur on their backs stood on end, and they bared their teeth into the empty space.  Then they would run away whimpering as if they had been kicked by someone invisible that we couldn’t see.

  That started to make people suspicious because animals sense things that humans don’t perceive.  The birds also stopped landing on the tree that was right above his gravestone.  The tree, which was once green and full of life, began to dry out and lose its leaves in a matter of weeks.  It seemed as if the earth beneath was poisoned, killing anything that tried to grow nearby.

  But what made the older gravediggers resign was what they began to see in the dark.  The older gravediggers who worked with me started avoiding working overtime in that area.  They said they saw things when night fell and that the place had become too heavy.  They spoke of tall, dark figures that stood beside his gravestone, staring at the gate.

  I used to laugh at them and say it was just old people’s imagination or the effect of the cachaça they drank in secret.  I tried to find a logical explanation, saying it was the shadow of a tree, the reflection of the street light.  I refused to believe that a dead man could cause so much trouble for those who were alive.  But my disbelief crumbled like a dead body on the night I saw it.

  It was on a full moon night, about three months after the funeral, that I had the proof I needed.  I was making my midnight rounds to check if the gates were locked with the padlocks.  The moon was bright and illuminated the stone paths between the tombs of wealthy families.  I was walking calmly, whistling some random tune to ward off sleep.

When I turned the corner of the corridor, where Flávio Augusto’s tomb was located, I stopped immediately.  I saw a man standing with his back to me, right in front of the baron’s grave.  The man was tall and wore an impeccable dark suit that gleamed in the moonlight.  He wore a top hat on his head, exactly like the outfit the Baron wore to city festivals.

  I thought it was some vandal or thief stealing bronze pieces who had jumped over the wall.  I took a deep breath and yelled in my deepest voice, telling him to get out of there immediately.  The man stopped moving and turned his face towards me very slowly, at an unnatural speed .  I felt my legs lock onto the stone floor and the blood drain from my face.

  I couldn’t see his face in detail because the shadow of the top hat’s brim covered everything, but the feeling of malice emanating from him hit me in the chest like a painful physical punch. He didn’t have a defined face, but his arrogant demeanor was unmistakable to anyone who knew him.  He took a step towards me, and the sound of his shoe on the floor was dry and loud.

  Before I could run [music] or scream for help, he vanished into thin air like cigarette smoke.  It was as if the wind had blown his figure away right before my eyes, leaving only emptiness.  I ran back to the guard post and locked the door, trembling like a leaf with fear.  I spent the whole night awake, holding an old rosary that I kept [music] in the drawer.

  For five years, we lived with this heavy presence that seemed to suck the joy out of the place.  The earth above his grave turned gray and cracked, and nothing grew there, not even grass. The smell near the tomb was always of something rotten, even with the grave closed and cemented over.  It was a sweet, nauseating smell of rotten meat that clung to your nose and made you feel sick.

  We learned to live with it and to respect the space of that unwanted and cursed tenant.  But the law of men says that after 5 years we have to exhumation to free up space.  If you’re feeling a chill down your spine right now, it’s because you know that messing with someone who hasn’t rested is dangerous.  I’m going to tell you now what we saw when we opened that coffin and the state the body was in.

  But first, make sure you’ve already turned on notifications so you don’t miss the next real-life stories here from the cemetery.  Support our work with your like, because it gives us the courage to continue telling the stories that no one else has the courage to tell. When exactly five years had passed since the burial, the order for exhumation arrived on my work clipboard.

  I was already 40 years old and had seen a lot of things come out from under the ground in that time. Normally in this type of damp terrain, you’ll only find clean bones and the suit falling apart.  Flávio’s family did n’t want to come and oversee the service and sent word that we should do everything ourselves.

  They wanted us to put the bones in the zinc box and take them to the general ossuary.  They wanted to get rid of that memento and free the jaigo to sell or use with another relative.  I called Toninho, who was a new [music] and strong helper, to help me with the heavy task.  The day was cloudy and muggy, just like the day of the funeral.

  5 years earlier.  We started breaking up the cement and digging into the earth, which was as hard as rock.  It seemed as if the ground didn’t want to give back what it had swallowed.  And with each swat of the hoe, we got twice as tired .  The stench of decay began to rise strongly even before we reached the coffin lid.

  It was a smell that seemed to have a taste and that made your stomach turn inside out.  Toninho complained that he was feeling unwell and had to stop to vomit behind a tree.  I told him to be a man and keep going because we had a deadline to finish this.  When the shovel struck the wood of the coffin, the sound was muffled and the smell became unbearable.

  The wood was rotten and damp, and it crumbled in our hands when we tried to clean the dirt off the top.  We threaded ropes underneath to lower the coffin to the surface, and it weighed a ton.  It was an absurd weight for a coffin that should only contain bones, scraps of old clothes, and wet wood.

  We used our strength and managed to place the urn on the dry grass next to the hole.  I picked up the crowbar to open the lid and felt my hand go cold in my leather glove. My gravedigger’s instinct told me that something was very wrong in there and that we shouldn’t look, but the job had to be done, and I forced the lid until the nails gave way with a sharp creak.

  When I removed the lid and the daylight shone inside, I took a step back in fright. Flávio Augusto’s body was in there, taking up all the space, and it looked like he had just died.  There was no decomposition whatsoever, and his skin was gray, but perfectly preserved and taut.  The suit was in perfect condition, and even the sheen of the fabric looked brand new, defying time and humidity.

  That was impossible, because nature always exacts its price and consumes our flesh.  But the detail that made Toninho scream in terror wasn’t the preservation of the body, it was the position the deceased was in inside that cramped wooden box.  He was lying face down with his face buried in the satin lining at the bottom of the coffin.

  His hands were crooked and [music] with broken fingernails full of splinters.  You could see the deep scratches on the coffin lid from the inside where he had scratched it.  It looked like he had woken up inside or had writhed in agony trying to escape from something.  Or worse still, it seemed as if some force had turned him around to humiliate his body in death.

  I took a deep breath and told Toninho to help me turn around so we could check if it was really him.  The body was rigid and heavy as lead, and we had to use a lot of force to turn it over.  When his body turned and his face was towards us, my aunt’s prophecy hit me.  The face was intact, with the nose, mouth, and ears in the correct positions, without any defects.

  But where should the eyes be?   There was nothing but two deep black holes.  These weren’t empty skull sockets with bones showing in the background, like we usually see.  They were holes of pure darkness, as if [music] the flesh had been sucked into the skull.  It had no eyeball, no eyelid, no blood, and no bugs eating it.  It was an absolute emptiness that seemed to stare back at us and suck in the daylight.

  His aunt’s curse had come true to the letter, and darkness had devoured his sight.  Those black holes in his pale, preserved face were the most horrifying thing I had ever seen in my life.  Toninho ran out shouting that he wouldn’t touch that thing for all the money in the world.  I stood paralyzed, staring at that eyeless face and feeling the evil emanating from it.

  I had to call the family and tell them there had been a complication and that they needed to come urgently.  When the eldest son and the widow arrived and looked inside the coffin, their reaction was one of panic.  The widow fainted on the spot and had to be carried away by the family’s drivers .

  The son turned as white as a sheet and asked what we had done to his father’s eyes.  I said that we had just opened and that it had been like that forever. No one could explain how a body could remain underground for 5 years and then emerge in that condition.  The family didn’t want to hear about an ossuary or keeping the remains in the family drawer.

  Right there at the edge of the open grave, they decided that the body had to be cremated immediately.  They said they wanted fire to purify it and to ensure it disappeared completely.  The hearse came to collect the body and took it to the crematorium in the neighboring city without a wake or farewell.  [music] They say the smoke that came out of the crematorium chimney that day was black and thick like fish.

  But even with his body gone, the mark he left on my cemetery has never faded.  The grave where he was buried remains open and empty to this day because no one has the courage to use it.  The surrounding land remains barren and dry, and not even an ant will walk across that cursed patch of ground.  The smell of rot and sulfur still appears from time to time on warm, windless nights [music].

I’m getting old and will soon stop working here, but I still avoid going there at night.  There’s a new gravedigger who says he sees a man in a suit walking near the back wall.  They say the man looks lost and that when he turns his face away, he has no eyes.  They think it’s just an old man’s tale to scare newcomers, but I know what I saw and what I touched.

  I know there are debts we incur in life that death cannot forgive, nor can time erase.  Flávio Augusto thought he owned the world [music], but ended up being a prisoner of his own wickedness.  And those black holes in his face are proof that there is a judgment we cannot escape.  If there’s one lesson I learned after seeing that man’s face, it’s that you reap exactly what you sow.

  It doesn’t matter if you have money or power, because the earth treats everyone equally and divine justice never fails. There are mysteries surrounding death that are best left untried, and instead we should simply respect the silence of the graves.  And when you feel that darkness is staring at you, remember to ask God for protection [music].

  Hold on to Him tightly and keep your faith strong, because against certain evils, only His light can defend us.  I’ll stay here for a while .  I hope you have a peaceful night.  If your conscience allows.